Forcing Israel Back “for Peace” Costs Gazan Lives

Every time American presidents have imposed a pull-back on Israeli forces — as Obama, Biden,  and Trump have all done, Biden multiple times — it has cost ordinary Gazans heavily. The same can be expected to prove true of the present pull-back.

It avails nothing that it is done in the name of a truce or a (weak) peace deal. That may win grudging applause from some media and self-styled peaceniks, but at a cost of real lives. Thousands more lives have been lost from each and every pull-back.

How many lives are being sacrificed this time, for making Israel now withdraw back to the “yellow line”, that is, to where it was before it started its take-over of Gaza City — and before the Gazans themselves mostly evacuated their city?

This “peace” policy bears genuine guilt. It means sacrificing all over again all the lives lost in the last month, by making them to have been lost in vain. It means that many more Gazan and Israeli lives will have to be lost all over again. This is true no matter whether the renewed killings come in a few weeks’ time, or after a long hiatus. Even if it happens only years down the road, it will in that case come after Hamas has rebuilt – and rebuilt with a plan to complete the genocide of the Jews this time, not just give the world a foretaste of it, as it did on October 7. For 80 years we have enjoyed a respite from genocide. Give Hamas another chance and our respite will come to an end. The Nazi Holocaust will resume.

The only way this renewed mass killing could fail to come to pass is if Hamas were completely disarmed, and exiled to house arrest in some Arab country; and further, Gaza were thoroughly deradicalized, through what would have to be a long transitional process. Then, finally, a peace-loving Palestinian Authority could more clearly emerge and could govern Gaza successfully. And then, finally, we would have made it to a viable two-state solution.

Let us hope President Trump pursues this goal, the goal of actual peace. Not the goal of any deal that can be announced quickly and provide a temporary illusion of peace.

And above all, not the fantasy of getting a Nobel prize. This fantasy makes for bad policy, but not for a Nobel prize. Why did the Nobel Committee awarded Obama a prize? Because it loved Obama for being elected and replacing Bush, whom it hated. Today it has transferred its hatred from Bush to Trump. He would have to invade Norway and arrest the entire Nobel Committee before he could ever hope to get a prize from it.

Far better to pursue a real peace, by insisting on the relevant terms for it. Hard as that is to get, it will be easier for President Trump than to get a Nobel prize.